APOLO ANTON OHNO

Photograph ByFrancesco Carrozzini for ESPN The Magazine

"It's been a year and a half since I've trained for short-track. Now I'm trying to stay fit for a bunch of things: Muay Thai, MMA and the New York City Marathon. I'm a novice in MMA so I'm not sparring, just kicking the bag and pads. I'm shooting to finish the marathon in three and a half hours. It's so different from short-track, where I was training six to 12 hours a day, six days a week all year. I was in a bubble. I did a ton of biking, a lot of interval and circuit training and some crazy jump programs. When I weighed 141 pounds, I could leg-press 2,000 pounds on a Cybex machine. I was so leg-dominant for so long; I'm just trying to be more balanced. My nickname as a kid was Chunky because I ate terribly. I wasn't fat, but at age 14, I said I wanted to become a machine, and back then there was more emphasis on power and explosiveness in short-track. Now it's all about being quick and lean. I went from 165 pounds in 2002 to 155 in 2005 to 141 last year. The biggest challenge for me today is learning how to rest and take a breather."